best out of office message youve seen

[SirQuintusAureliusMaximus]

this is quality and I'm in awe of the bravery.

I am out of the office until Wednesday 3rd January 2024 and will have little / no interest in work during that time. In my absence please contact my colleague [name].

I think my favourite (although not purposely funny) was when a man went off on paternity leave, not long after a lady in the same small department going off on maternity leave.

His OOO originally said something along the lines of "I'll be unavailable until XX/XX/XX because I'm delighted to let you know I've just become a father. Please contact Y for any urgent queries."

I saw it about a week late when he'd added

"Thank you to everybody who has sent congratulations. For avoidance of doubt, my baby and Colleague's Name's are two different ones!"

Neither do I but customers appear to think I work 24/7
I put OOO on at a weekend
I've even had to put it on for Christmas Day and Boxing Day as someone asked if we were open
No, give me 2 days off please!

I once emailed my sons hospital consultant. OOO reply was ' back Wednesday '

"I am not here, regards"

I’ve got colleagues that put their OOO when they are finished for the day until the following morning or over the weekend. They don’t say when they will be back. Our team working hours are between 8:30 and 6 Monday - Friday. No one is expected to be around outside these times and we make sure someone is around.
The best one I saw this week is “I’ve gone back to see my mummy for Christmas. I will reply to your email if I return”

"I am on leave until X. In my absence please contact Y. I I will not be looking through my unread email upon my return. If your enquiry is important, please contact me again after this date.".

Genius

@Switchingoff it's company policy to delete emails after annual leave. It would be the management teams responsibility to make sure staff are up to date. If it's a client email they have a contact so it can be picked up by them and my cover can update me when we do our hand over.

Bet you're a riot at parties 🙄

My OOO is fairly standard. Unexciting finance job.

What I do is put it on mid afternoon of the day I am finishing.

Too many times I would get an email passing something over to me at 5.29 on my last day before a fortnight of annual leave was starting.

This would be deliberate by the sender knowing they had bought themselves 2 weeks grace and essentially passing the buck to me. So I would get back to find this thing was now urgent and their boss would be chasing me to find out why I had 'sat on it' for 2 weeks.

Now they get a ping back. Sometimes I will get the thing done before AL. This is childishly entertaining as I know they were hoping for the 2 week grace period to get on with something else.

Someone who had left the company’s external and internal OOO was simply:

“The rat has left the sinking ship.”

Oh I see. That makes sense! It wasn't clear that you meant that in your previous post.

Not an email OOO but a voicemail...

A few years ago I was made redundant. It was deliberately kept very quiet because my company knew my customers would be royally pissed off, so very few knew until the week I left. My departing gift was to record a VM that basically said I was no longer working for that company and was now working for NASA as a rocket scientist, and for them to contact NASA if I could help with anything. It was 2 weeks before my (nice) ex boss contacted me laughing hysterically asking me what my pin was to change the VM as loads of customers weren't happy 😁

I like the idea of funny ones for internal people. Mine is basic, I'm not in, date I'm returning, if urgent call xxx, if not I'll reply when back. No one has access to my emails if I'm off.
I don't take my work home, so I won't be checking emails on and off. The office job I do is 9-5, M-F. Outside those hours I'm sure they can wait.

My boss does this, he had an accident and was off for three months.
He deleted 600+ emails without skimming them and said "if the issues haven't been dealt with in three months they'll email me again to chase"
Makes perfect sense

I thought the bit where I said “always factual eg I’ll be checking messages or not, when I’ll be back” was pretty clear!

I hope you read OOOs more carefullly 😉

I just meant to don’t follow a standard corporate template. I say something like “much to my other half’s annoyance I will be checking emails…” or something like that. I find that people read them more and remember Them better when it’s not the standard outlook template. It’s much more “me”.

I disagree. It assumes every email is simply for a short term task.

I would be raging if anyone in my team did this.

new guidance is emailed out to the whole department - some clown deletes it and therefore isn’t aware there is an new approach.

meeting requests are deleted so this idiot hasn’t either accepted or declined potentially important meetings.

i ofcourse delete some emails - but some are very important. And the sender has a record that they have informed me of a situation, should the matter ever go further.

it’s a stupid, hot headed thing to do. And in my industry it could have legal fall out.

I think he will have been (different team to me so not sure), my manager saw it and reported it. Apparently he's got form for it as he'd done it before.

@FirstFallopians @SirQuintusAureliusMaximus

I've been on maternity leave since the end of 2022. I will be deleting everything that wasn't sent in 2024 when I return mid January. Anything important will come back to me.

Make sure your boss is aware you are taking this approach - and make sure your return to work interview is documented and it’s clear you are not aware of any policy changes, important information or training requirements emails to you in the twelve months.

document this and make sure someone brings you up to speed on every development.

is there an alternative system we’re you will see what mandatory training was rolled out? Will your calendar update with meetings and changes to schedules even if you delete everything?

It's not an interesting approach it's how emails (when ooo of more than a few days) should be dealt with.

Depends on the sector surely?
I work at a university and deleting emails would be a really unprofessional thing to do.

I've been on leave this week and I've had emails that aren't urgent but they're important and I will need to action them when I get back.

This one
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/nov/01/5#:~:text=A%20council%20put%20up%20a,when%20designing%20the%20bilingual%20sign.

@Bellyblueboy I would find it every strange that you would be annoyed at members of your team following instructions from the ceo.

As I said any meetings or anything important will be discussed at hand over.

It's also not a hot headed response it's to make returning to work after annual leave less stressful. I would be more annoyed at staff spending 1hr plus checking through email that have already been dealt with.

I agree @ElaineMBenes the “delete everything” approach, tempting though it may be (I know I’ve been tempted) fails to differentiate between urgent and important information.

I agree @Bellyblueboy lots of emails are critical information. Mind you, I think a lot must have this delete mentality as so many people are fucking terrible at their job, it might explain things.

I can imagine the personality types who have these “humorous” ooo, “eee I’m dead random and wacky me ain’t I”. No you’re an insufferable prick Janet, there’s a difference.

I loved funny OOO emails when I worked at a boring corporate job. They reminded me that there were actual people behind the grey drabness. Then again, I’m easily amused so 🤷🏼‍♀️